Significant Global Warming
January 22nd, 2007 · by David Bradley
Nowhere is the issue of significant figures currently more important than in the debate on anthropogenic climate change, global warming, and atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. The number of blogs and news sites creating ever more extravagant claims for the role of human activity in climate change is truly set to rise.
Over on SEOblackhat.com there’s an interesting myth-busting session going on, that’s apparently being done in the context of a search engine optimization competition for gaming the phrase “GlobalWarming Awareness2007″, and it makes for interesting reading. I’ve adapted a handful of the myths-truths reported their for your delectation.
- Myth: The Earth is 1, 2, 5 or 10 degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago.
- Truth: At most we’ve had an average 0.6 Celsius (and probably closer to 0.3 Celsius) increase over the last 100 years, that’s a barely measurable 0.003-0.006 degrees annually!
- Myth: “I know Anthropogenic Global Warming is occurring because it’s warmer here in Small Town. I know it’s warmer, I can feel it.”
- Truth: Higher local temperatures don’t mean a thing, as we’re talking about global averages here.
- Myth: Carbon dioxide levels and average global temperatures are at a record high in Earth’s history.
- Truth: No they’re not, carbon dioxide and temperatures are at some of the lowest levels going back millions of years.
- Myth: Rising carbon dioxide levels are directly linked to rising global temperatures.
- Truth: temperature rises seem to lag carbon dioxide rises by between 400 and 4000 years.
- Myth: Receding Ice Sheets is proof that anthropogenic Global Warming is occurring.
- Truth: The icecaps are melting.
- Truth: They might be on Mars, but Antarctica is growing.
- Myth: Carbon dioxide is the biggest greenhouse gas.
- Truth: No, that’s water vapor, and methane is some twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide.
- Myth: If we accept it’s real, we can do something about it.
- Truth: Even if that 0.3-0.6 degree rise is down to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions none of the carbon offsetting in the world is going to make any difference, there’s no way we can suck out all that carbon dioxide and bury it at the bottom of the ocean to bring levels back down to the pre-industrial without using a whole lot more energy and producing a whole lot more emissions to boot in the process, solar and wind power or not.
- Myth: It must be true, they say so.
- Truth: What if it’s a lot of hot air?
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12 responses so far ↓
Mark // Jan 22, 2007 at 8:09 pm
According to an article on chron.com today, many environmental scientists are admitting that they may have oversold the global warming issue.
I quote: “In their efforts to capture the public’s attention, then, have climate scientists oversold global warming? It’s probably not a majority view, but a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.
‘Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster,’ says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado.”
Shirley // Jan 23, 2007 at 11:19 am
So, are we going to get an ice age instead?
I was questioning the antropogenic global warming just based on my classic humanistic education: hubris, I said.
Now I am glad that scientists have doubts, too.
Washington Times has an interesting take on teh supposed melting away of Greenland and its impact on sea levels.
“The satellite data (analyzed by NASA’s Scott Luthcke in the journal Science less than two months ago) show a reduction of 3 hundred-thousandths of Greenland’s total ice per year.
Multiplying the satellite-based figure by 23 feet, which is what others have claimed would be the rise if the whole of Greenland’s ice melted into the sea, gives the annual rise in sea level of .01 inch per year.
Averaged over three decades, that’s a third of an inch, which indeed is too small to be detectable.
Consider that melt over a century and it’s little more than an inch. That’s not really enough to make anyone with a beach house worry is it?
Clive // Jan 29, 2007 at 3:47 pm
US Senate Committee site says: “The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.”
Ridiculous!!! I thought this was a free country.
My skeptical remarks about climate change continue to be vindicated. In The Times this week, Nigel Calder former editor at my old virtual stamping ground New Scientist, points out the same issue I did regarding the 10% uncertainty being an enormous issue, scientifically speaking. He also mentions various other problems such as the fact that despite a lot of quacking about migrant birds moving earlier than they ought, “in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago?”
Moreover, Calder adds, “While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.”
So, what’s going on? Is climate change a scam? Is the changing sun the real driving force, and not anthropogenic carbon dioxide levels?
Interesting post on http://www.quickrob.com/weblog/?p=961 about the irrational points of view regarding global warming that we hear from DiCaprio, Crowe, Gore et alia
I come from Malaysia. There’s lots of tropical rainforest here. Many of the trees here in my country are actually the tallest tropical trees in the world.
Since 2000, I’ve observed many of the bigger trees dying out….slowly, insidiously. Looking across the rainforest silhouette, I notice even a slight thinning of the canopy and many emergent trees downsizing their branches, crowns getting smaller, gnarly….
What could be the reason? A patch of primary forest I used to visit for 5 years straight, saw many big trees falling or just withering…
Pictures 20 years ago of the canopy of a particular patch, and pictures of the exact same spot today, show degradation in the canopy structure, with many big trees missing and replaced with smaller ones…and mind you this patch is a virgin jungle with no logging. Its not obvious if no one told you or showed you the two pics - then and now…
I’m a very observant person and so I notice these things…it’s pretty alarming from a certain standpoint.
This may or may not indicate global warming, I dont know, but primary rainforests are supposed to be very stable habitats, with little change.
Dino, there has never been a period in earth’s history when it has been entirely stable without any change, there are always climatic, geologic, and cosmic events that influence the equilibrium. As a species, we have only really been observing things, as well as we may for a few years. We are experiencing climate change, of course, that’s part of the nature of the planet on which we live. Whether it is going to take us to an undesirable equilibrium point some time in the future, is the problem both sides of the debate will not know until we reach that time.
John M. Quinn // May 2, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Your “Truth” That Temperature changes LAG CO2 Changes by 400 to 400 years is, I believe, erroneous. The Truth that I know is that during four interglatial periods (i.e., going from an ice age to a warming period) temperature changes LAGGED CO2 changes by 800 +/- 200 years. This is based on the 400,000 year long VOSTOK, Antarctica ice core. Ref: Monnin et al., Atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last glacial terminaation, Nature, 291 pp. 112-114 (2001)
Hi John
Thanks for the correction, I will double check the sources on this and correct as appropriate.
db
Wayne Smallman over on Blah has an interesting take on the myth of global warming.
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